Where We Are Now . . .

It's been forever since we have been able to blog for Andrew, but here we are again. We set the blogging aside for a while because we were going through many changes and regrouping. We've since made many changes and are finally settled and are happy to report we will be blogging on Andrew's progess once again.

We left Cali back in December '09 and relocated to Congress, AZ. It's a very rural area just north of Wickenburg where all of my family live. We would have liked to have gone back to Yuma, however the VA clinic there is just not equipped to handle someone with the level of injury such as Andrew's. We are just about an hour away from the VA hospital here and they have a wonderful Spinal Cord Injury unit there. We have a great house here and are loving how peaceful it is out here in the country. The kids have a horse a quad and a dirt bike to keep them busy and they are loving going to Wickenburg High School (same high school I graduated from).

Back in March, Bobbi (the oldest) got married to Chance Thompson and quickly made me a grandma 6 weeks ago. They had Baby Connor and he is the light of our life. Drew is playing volleyball and is planning on playing basketball, and C.J. is riding his dirt bike and his horse as much as he can. He wants to wrestle and then of course play baseball in the spring.

Recently, an addition was put on to the house which consists of a new (very large) master bedroom, roll-in shower for Andrew, and best of all a new gym for his therapy. This was my dad's project and everything went very smoothly (thanks Dad!). Andrew has two nurses of which actually relocated to this area with us to take care of him. They are like family and we are so blessed to have them. John came with us from Oceanside and Judy came to us from Yuma. John has also been through the Project Walk home training program to give Andrew his therapy here at home. We will be putting an FES arm and leg cycle in the gym as well as a Total Gym slide board, a standing frame, and a big table to work him out on.

Andrew was recently re-evaluated at his annual exam at the VA-SCI hospital in San Diego and has been rediagnosed from a C-2 to a C-3 level of injury. This means his function and sensation levels are getting better. He also no longer has a trachestomy and he has a pretty decent cough. We are able to manually cough him if he's unable to do it himself. His voice is much louder and it's nice that he doesn't have the pain from his trachestomy. We have also worked hard at decreasing his meds. The only controlled med he takes now is Ambien and he's nearly off all his baclofen and nuerontin which control his spasms and nerve pain. These meds counter some of what we are trying to achieve with his therapy. Spasms are actually a good thing with the kind of therapy he takes.

We are going to be using this blog to not only update family and friends of his progress with his therapy, but his nurses and myself are going to use it to journal it so we have a good record. We fill good things are coming and we want to keep track of every single thing. Andrew has gotten unbelievable upper body strength and even a bit of a bicept coming in. His deltoid is very strong and his sensation area is now below is nipples. He wants very bad to get to the point where he can hold Baby Connor. We will be posting video of his excersise and we also want to keep record of how he feels each day with his therapy and not having meds. Please feel free to comment in . . . we will read them to him for support and inspiration. He is so dedicated to his therapy and so excited to have the equipment right here in his own home.

Thank you all for your support and prayers . . . God has been so good to us.

God Bless,
Joye